Angus street lighting could be dimmed

One potentially dark outcome of Angus Council’s latest budget could see alterations to how street lights are operated.

One suggestion which could shave off £75,000 from the authority’s budget is to switch off every second street light in certain areas.

Councillor Alex King, finance convenor for Angus Council said: “One possibility is to turn of every second street light at periods of low usage. Not like in Auchenblae when all of the lights had been turned off.

“At the end of the day we need all the street lights in some areas, all we can do is try it. It’s nothing new, nothing that hasn’t been tried before, but people have become used to the idea of street lights being all night. Obviously there are areas where you would want full lights all the time, like main roads etc, it’s something to be looked at.”

He added: “One of the things we are doing is we are switching halogen and sodium discharge bulbs to LED lights, they do the job on the roads. But they do cost a lot less to run.”